Notes: Sect. 2. — How the soul is kept from rest in God.
Notes: Sect. 2. — How the soul is kept from rest in God.
439
Here “luxurious” means epicurean: devoted to pleasure or to gratifying the senses (as in the next paragraph).
440
That is, women’s faces.
441
Artificial in the sense of unnatural, or contrived – intentionally decorated to draw lustful attention, to lure.
442
A magnet.
443
This is not referring to music itself. David wrote, played, and arranged music for God’s glory (1Kng 10.12; Psa 68.25). Rather, this refers to wanton revelry in music, where God is not its focus or audience (Isa 5.12).
444
Namely, sensual livers, who yet perform religious exercises.
445
That is, surrender themselves to drunkenness, music, and lascivious.
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Namely, the more seemingly religious.
447
Namely, of those spoken of in the paragraph immediately preceding, whom he begins to distribute here into three classes or sorts; all belonging to the second sort, namely: the more seemingly religious.
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That is, God is one, and His Word is one, therefore the church should be one (Joh 17.22) – but instead, it is many.
449
1Tim 4:8 For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.
450
That is, our rest is found in God alone, and in nothing we do ourselves. To the extent these exercises lead us to rest in and depend on God, they are beneficial; but in themselves they have no value – they are means, and not ends.
451
Neglecting to wash by faith in the blood of Christ, the “Fountain was opened for sin, and for uncleanness,” Zech. 13.1. — “The blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin,” 1John 1.17. — “How much more shall the blood of Christ purge your conscience from dead works?” Heb. 9.14. — “Purifying their hearts by faith,” Acts 15.9.
452
Our author himself had been such a wanderer for a dozen of years. See his Preface, and compare that heavy word in Eccl. 10.15, “The labour of the foolish wearies every one of them, because he does not know how to go to the city.”
453
Namely, of reason, as the judge and rule in religion. The holy Scripture is the rule, and the Spirit of God speaking in it is the judge; it is the business of our reason to discern what they teach, and to submit to it without reserve.
454
That is, for, or to be.
455
2Cor. 12.11, “Though I am nothing.”— 1Cor. 3.18, “Let him become a fool, that he may be wise.”— Chap. 1.31, “He that glories, let him glory in the Lord.”
456
According to that saying of our Lord in Mat. 19.17, “There is none good but one, that is God.”